Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/95

Rh of Emigration would have passed two or three years sooner. Even the Commissioners were unable to do away with these leeches so long as they had no landing-place from which the runners could be excluded. When, in 1855, they finally succeeded in obtaining a lease of Castle Garden, they at once put a stop to the operations of these creatures. It is said that on one day several hundreds of them sailed for California, where a large portion fell into the hands of the vigilance committee just then organized at San Francisco, while others tried to carry on the old business of defrauding and swindling, and some perished in the filibuster expeditions in Mexico and Central America. In the days of which we have been speaking, the runner business had culminated. These men were masters of the situation, and it was only by gradual efforts that the Commissioners of Emigration were enabled to take from them the sources of plunder. Even in their examination before the Committee of the Assembly, they found it unnecessary to conceal any of their frauds. They even openly and boldly avowed and testified to their own depravity.

"It is a fact," says Henry Vail, a New York runner, "that I and others engaged in the business get all we can from passengers, except that I never shave a lady that is travelling alone; it is bad enough to shave a man; I have all I get over a certain amount which is paid to the transportation companies."

"I have been in Smethurst's office," continues Charles Cook, another New York employee in the emigrant passage business, "when Irish, Dutch (German), and English emigrants were there, and have heard Roach tell his men to promise them all they wanted, that is, they should have railroad passage and all of their luggage free; the same persons I saw afterwards with canal-boat tickets. Roach said he kept the party called the Sixteen at a great loss for the purpose of controlling the Dutch emigrants; the Irish were worth nothing; the English alone would not pay, but putting the Sixteen men, or fighting men, with them to help Brische, from whom he was obtaining Dutch passengers, he could make a good stake; that there was no use of talking of being honest while in the passage business; all he wanted was to get hold of the cattle; he did not care how or what they were promised they would be compelled to point up in Albany while